— Anne Lamott

quell horror.

anyway, this is the end of the alphabet postings for november, which we are wrapping up in december.  this should be of no surprise to you, AT ALL.  (you expected me to keep to a schedule?  have we met?)

the end of things always make me remember the beginnings of things, what i’ve learned, what has happened.  i think that’s pretty normal, right?  in december the “best of” lists start pouring out, along with the memories and artifacts of the year, and how it all began–where were we a year ago?

the XYZ’s always make you remember the ABC’s.

and on that note of reflection and learning, here’s something i ran across a few weeks ago that made me think; despite mr. adams’ odd views (with which I don’t agree) on several things, it’s still interesting to think about.  I’m deciding how much I feel this is true or not. 

what do you think?

“You are what you learn. If all you know is how to be a gang member, that’s what you’ll be, at least until you learn something else. If you go to law school, you’ll see the world as a competition. If you study engineering, you’ll start to see the world as a complicated machine that needs tweaking. A person changes at a fundamental level as he or she merges with a particular field of knowledge. If you don’t like who you are, you have the option of learning until you become someone else. There’s almost nothing you can’t learn your way out of. Life is like a jail with an unlocked, heavy door. You’re free the minute you realize the door will open if you simply lean into it.”

-Scott Adams on Dilbert.com [via Mighty Girl]

“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.”

- Chuck Close

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”

– attribution of quote still in question, but ain’t it lovely?

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.

— M. Scott Peck

–George Perecon writi

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery

{from the author of the little prince.  phew.  that one hits me in the gut, it’s so poignant.  love.}



whoa.  just…wow.  in the imitable words of the fire theft, why is it that the simplest things are so hard to grasp?

so…what are you paying attention to?

squirrel-note: i just saw a mouse SAUNTER across the floor.  these creatures driven inside by the rain are making me CRAZY.